Sheepish

I thought several times yesterday of the fact that today was September 11th. And that I should take the time to remember and be more grateful. And then I had the worst day ever, notwithstanding my greatest prayer of the last two weeks was answered. I was granted a happy baby, but given also nineteen bottles of peaches that were unsecurely sealed after a marathon preserving weekend, and a torrent of Monday-like kid debris and minutae.

Even after I carved out a few minutes to report and rejoice over the happy baby, I couldn’t turn the lumbering boat of everything-bothering that was the day.

So this morning I remembered again. (How could we forget? We will never forget.)

And what I remember is that even that day, as I sat on the border of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights, what I knew I must do to honor their death, their sacrifice, their bravery, was to remember them and then appreciate my own life, my own ease, my own blessedly normal peaceful existence.

I worried four years ago that this inclination is just a shade of making it all about yourself-itis, as every post and article (except the biography ones) inevitably are.

And I am sheepish anew that what I wrote most recently is complaining about a 99% happy, healthy baby.

This is the blessing and the curse of young motherhood immersion. I am on the older end of young motherhood but not the shallower end of the immersion. I have not space in my brain or heart to be consumed properly by the heartache of the world. What matters the Dow Jones when there is another diaper to change? What room for the heartache of strangers when childhood hurts and tender stumblings crowd around?

But it is precisely as a mother, a mother of daughters, that I do care. What kind of world will they have? How will they be treated as women, as Americans, as Mormons? How can they make the world better as women, as Mormons, as Americans? How can I?